Your Father Comes Home
by Anime-Angel-Ash
Summary: Emily is difficult from her earliest days, driving Jessamine to her wits' end. Perhaps Corvo can be of some help. For Father's Day, for fathers and mothers both.


_Little child, do not cry_

_Little child, do not fear_

_Be strong as the palm in a blazing wind_

_Be brave as the whirling storm_

_You have no need of sorrow_

_You have no need fright_

_Your father comes home_

_Your father comes home_

_Powerful seas guide his flight._

_/_

"She is asking for you, sir," says the anxious young maid at his door, her fingers wringing her apron as her gaze drifts along the wall. "The—the child . . ."

Corvo's sigh comes from somewhere deep in his chest as he closes his blades manual with a soft tap, and stands from his desk. He offers the girl a short smile as he exits after her, bearing her nervous explanations (the Empress will see no one else and will not give the child over to the nursemaids, though she cannot not say why—though _of course_ she isn't questioning the will of the Empress, not for a moment, it is just that—) with quiet patience. She seems unsure what to do with herself when they reach the entrance to the study. "You may go," Corvo says, doing his best to assist her.

After she bows and turns away, stiff in the shoulders and fidgeting in the hands, he pushes the door open and shut it quietly behind him.

He expects to hear infant squalls instantly, and is surprised at the quiet. Crossing the study on silent feet and edging to the bedroom door, he looks inside. The crisp white of the bassinet stands beside the great four-poster, both blocked from the front entrance by curtains and shades. There are no sounds of alarm or discontent, though he is not sure if that bodes better. He does, however, glimpse a familiar shape beneath the bed's purple blankets, curled tight and tense.

He moves toward her, stopping at the side of the bed opposite the pram. It is only when he approaches that she turns to glance over her shoulder, and he sees the redness in her eyes.

"She fell asleep," Jessamine tells him weakly, a minute smile turning her mouth and avoiding those eyes. She looks back toward the bassinet, Corvo following suit: the babe lies swaddled within, still with sleep, cries quieted by the small fist at her mouth. Silent and calm, for now.

He kneels at the bedside, watching Jessamine's back when she looks away. He waits, patiently. She breaths in and out, the sound like glassware shivering as gales swirled through the courtyard.

"She cries when I hold her," Jessamine says in a quivering voice. "No matter what I do."

With a sigh kept silent in his throat, Corvo lifts a hand, resting it gently on her arm. She shifts lightly under his touch, but in a small way, stilling a moment later. "It's nothing to worry about," he says. His thumb traces a short, soft line on the sleeve of her gown, once, twice.

Jessamine nods quietly, loosened hair draped over her pillow, but makes no move to look at him. An image flashes through his mind—her, streaked with sweat and hair matted, struggling to summon a smile as he approached, long after the nurses had cleared away the stains of her trial. Her hand stretched toward that bassinet even as she was too weak to reach it. She is feeble in a different way now than she was then.

He ceases those small strokes long enough to brush hair away from the back of her neck. Her breathing slows over the moments until he can tell slumber has claimed her. His hand still traces the silk of her sleeves, a quiet touch, and only this solitude allows for it. It is a relief compared to the baby's cries—or worse, the sounds the penetrated the bedchamber on that day, as he stood at attention on the other side of its vast, tight-closed door. Her screams that he could do nothing to quiet or ease.

Perhaps even worse, however, was the look she had given him not days after, face and eyes grown red as she curled her arms to her breast. "She won't eat," Jessamine said, and Corvo felt a twisting in his chest as she hugged herself tight.

Something splits the quiet. A soft sound at first, a minute shifting of cloth that does not come from Jessamine. Corvo's eyes just find the bassinet when he hears a small groan, the fussy sounds of wakefulness within. He straightens up; he hears her coos becoming more unhappy by the moment, a mite louder with every small breath.

He knows this sound in its more insistent form. Silently, he looks to Jessamine, the slow rise and fall of her shoulders.

/

A cry wakes Jessamine from her near sleep, quick breaths to prepare for a proper squall, and she is near to weeping herself.

Her body still aches in unnatural ways, ways she would not have believed possible before carrying a child. She is still nearly as weak as she was in the hours after the ordeal, nearly too tired to stand and move. Perhaps she would not be, if she could sleep. The crying fills her nights, and even when she pulls the child from the bassinet and rocks and murmurs gently and tries everything she has ever heard to do, nothing works. Every time the nurses visit her bedside, asking more and more insistently to let them take the child to a proper nursery (neither an Empress' health nor time should be compromised), it becomes harder and harder to rebuff them.

Now, as her fingers curl against blankets which bring no comfort, face twisting against her pillow, she is more than tempted to call for them.

A shushing quiets her thoughts—a real sound, she realizes, when it comes again. She hears Corvo rise, bootsteps quiet and quick, the sound moving around the bed. Her brows furrow over closed eyes.

His steps cease with a hush, and she hears whispers that are small defense against the little one's agitation. There comes a shuffling, the delicate swish of shifting fabric. Slowly, her eyes drift open, the world a swath of colors—she sees a draping of white, carefully tucked up a moment later by Corvo's blurred hand. He quickly grows clearer, dark against the bundle cradled in his arms.

He shushes the baby, that same low, quiet sound. He even presses a finger to his lips, as if she can know its meaning—Jessamine's lip curls, with no joy. The baby continues to fuss, and she is sure the little one will start shrieking despite him at any moment, that shrill yet rough caterwauling that feels—and perhaps it is a fool's thought, but—as if it sticks in her, prodding harshly, angrily at her breast.

But the sound doesn't come. The whining drifts away into minute hiccups, then gentle coos. Jessamine's eyes open much wider, taking in Corvo's small, victorious grin as he holds the child.

She is struck with petty envy, tendrils of it snaking through her belly. Her eyes prick, fingers tighten in the sheets. Can she truly be less motherly than her scarred, calloused, bearded bodyguard? She is nearly ready to turn her back, regretting she even asked for his company, when that grin parts, and a song drifts from his lips.

It is a quiet sound, meant for the child alone. Jessamine blinks her surprise—she has never known Corvo to sing (the man _speaks_ only sparingly), and it is so foreign she cannot help but listen. The words are equally odd, and as she strains to make them out from his deep, quiet tone she realizes they are not of any language she understands. The sound alone, however, is as soothing as strange, and she remains still.

The little one makes a sleepy sound. As the roiling in Jessamine's stomach settles, she sees that Corvo's rocking is clumsy and nervous, holding close and moving too little. His great forms seems ill-suited to the delicate work, and yet even unversed, it is enough for the child. Jessamine feels her lips turn up sincerely now.

There is something different in Corvo's face, she thinks as she watches him. A small hand reaches from the confines of the cloth, stretching out for his nose, or perhaps his cheek. He intercepts with a finger carefully placed, and the little one curls her own around it. He looks to that hand, his lips faltering in the middle of their foreign song. He seems, she realizes, to catch his breath.

She leaves the silence undisturbed a moment longer, like the cool surface of a pond, before she shifts against the quiet. "What are you singing?" she murmurs.

Corvo, jerked from the bed of that silence, looks to her. Sheepishness turns his mouth and eyes, and her smile grows when he chuckles, knowing he has been caught.

"What does it mean?" she asks.

"I only know Old Serkonan lullabies," he answers, and his eyes turn back to the little one as she starts to fuss. "I am not sure what it means."

"It's lovely," she says, eyes drifting closed, sleep brushing her eyelids.

She listens to the child's small sounds and Corvo's deep, present silence, drifting lightly against slumber. In the quiet of the room, she has nearly fallen away when she feels the bed sink with great weight and delicate impact. At her breast she feels another weight, and as her eyes open she finds that swath of white and child, Corvo's darker shape behind.

Jessamine makes a small sound, one she means to be a laugh. She thinks to note Corvo's boots, surely dirtying the bedcover, or the maids or nurses who may stumble upon their scandal. But as he rests his head on her other pillow and guides the babe into her drowsy embrace, the words drift away.

"Her name is Emily," she tells him, holding her child for the first time without tears. Biting her lip, she leans down to hide her eyes. "Lovely lady Emily."

Corvo murmurs his acknowledgement as if he does not notice, and the weight of his arm finds its way to her shoulder. As Jessamine strays into sleep, her daughter in her arms, her dreams are full of deep, delicate quiet.

/

_Little child, do not cry_

_Little child, do not fear_

_Last you saw your father sail_

_Last they saw him gone_

_Took your mother from cradle's edge_

_To a bed of earth and stone_

_But this night fear no demons_

_This night steel your heart_

_Your mother comes home_

_Your father comes home_

_Silent guardians, whole and part._

- Translation from a book of Old Serkonan nursery rhymes


End file.
